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Blogging adventures about film and the people that live it and love it

A24 is the new studio to beat lately. With plenty of oddball flicks like “Swiss Army Man” and “Spring Breakers” or genre infused flicks like “Under the Skin”, “Slow West”, “Green Room” “The Lobster” and ‘Ex-Machina”-they’ve always made curiously unique choices when choosing the films that would fall under their umbrella. They also happened to work with the recent underdog best picture winner “Moonlight”. So with that repertoire behind their filmography I went into “Free Fire” expecting to find another unique flick.

“Free Fire” is a one location story about an arms deal gone wrong in an abandoned warehouse, in 1978 Boston. The wrong guns are brought to the deal, and plenty of high strung emotions as well. Tempers flare when enemies recognize each other and all sense gets thrown out the window. Cillian Murphy leads a band of IRA (Irish Republican Army) members and hired help to purchase a heap of guns, while Sharlto Copley heads a coy operation of arms dealers looking to sell. In between the group mechanics, the side characters emerge loudly and with gusto. This movie is essentially all second act, which clips by at a swift hour and thirty minutes. The tension is kept alive as the characters get clipped by bullets, writhe in the dirt and broken glass of the warehouse floor, and crawl about looking for potential enemies and blindly shooting with the crack shot skill of a storm trooper in a looney-tunes cartoon. Combining slapstick gunplay humor with murderous intent and Tarantino-esque handling of dialogue, “Free Fire” aims to be a bloody good time at the theater.

The best part about this genre flick is the cast. Sharlto Copley and Armie Hammer, as Vernon and Ord respectively, steal every scene that they’re in. Brie Larson also pulls a gem of a performance out of “Justine”, the intermediary of the deal. All of the smaller characters that impact the story, like Jack Reynor’s Harry or Sam Riley’s Stevo, are boisterous and big in nature as well, cackling above the crackle of gunfire amidst the chaos. Michael Smiley’s Frank and Babou Ceesay’s Martin also play integral roles even though they may be the quieter parts of the whole.

“Free Fire” wasn’t pretending to be more than what it presented itself as, and that’s part of what made it so damn fun. I enjoyed my time with it, and if you give it a look, I think you might too!

Final Score: 7000 bullets (How many they used in making the film! Check out link below)